Newton Abbot railway station serves the market town of Newton Abbot, in Devon, England. It is on the Exeter–Plymouth line, from , via . The station is managed by Great Western Railway, which also provides services along with CrossCountry. It is the junction for the line to but, for many years, it was also the junction for the branch line to and the site of a large locomotive workshop.
History
Broad gauge
thumb|left|A decorative screen with SDR initials from above the door of the original station
The station was opened by the South Devon Railway Company on 30 December 1846, when its line was extended from . It was opened through to on 20 June 1847 and a branch to Torquay was added on 18 December 1848. The Moretonhampstead and South Devon Railway opened its branch line on 26 June 1866. All of these railways used broad gauge.
Approaching the station from the town along Queen Street, people first saw the large goods shed. On the opposite side of the line was the pumping house for the atmospheric railway system that powered the trains for a short while. The passenger station was situated to the south of these buildings. It originally consisted to two, later three, small train sheds covering separate platforms for trains running in each direction to , and Torquay. It was rebuilt in 1861 as a single station, with a larger train shed covering all three platforms.
On 1 February 1876, the South Devon Railway, which had already amalgamated with the Moretonhampstead company, was amalgamated into the Great Western Railway. The station was originally known as just Newton, but this was changed to Newton Abbot on 1 March 1877.
The last broad gauge train ran on 20 May 1892, after which all the lines in the area were converted to standard gauge over the space of a weekend. The workshops at Newton Abbot played a part in converting broad gauge locomotives, carriages and wagons to standard gauge over the following months.
A new station
Plans were put forward to rebuild the station with four platforms, but World War I delayed the plans. The goods facilities were moved onto the Moretonhampstead branch line on 12 June 1911 and some sidings were laid at Hackney on 17 December 1911, to replace those near the engine shed. These alterations paved the way for the expansion of the station following the war, with the rebuilt station being opened eventually by Lord Mildmay of Flete on 11 April 1927. The station, built to the designs of the Chief Architect of the Great Western Railway, Percy Emerson Culverhouse, now faced the town along Queen Street rather than the old wooden goods shed.
Also in 1927, an old broad gauge 0-4-0 locomotive, Tiny, was put on display on a station platform to provide a link with the past. It remained in place until the 1980s when it was moved to the South Devon Railway at Buckfastleigh.
The southbound platform had to be rebuilt again, following an air raid on 20 August 1940 during World War II. Six bombs were dropped (one failed to explode), killing 14 people. The line to Heathfield has since been reopened, seeing daily timber trains in 2012 to Chirk in Wales.
South West Trains ran services until December 2009 between and and Paignton, before withdrawing services west of Exeter to form an hourly service from Exeter St Davids to London Waterloo.
After many years as an open station, new ticket barriers were installed in August 2017.
Accidents and incidents
Newton Abbot has proved to be an accident-prone station. On 22 August 1851, the locomotive Brigand was derailed and Switchman Bidgood had to pay one pound towards its repairs. 31 people were injured. Then, in March 1997, a similar train from London Paddington was derailed by a bearing failure as it approached the station.
Description
thumb|right|alt=Diagram showing the tracks and platforms at Newton Abbot, with platform 3 at the top (not to scale).|Track layout in 2009
thumb|right|Ticket barriers were installed on platform 3 in 2017
The main entrance is on the west side of the station (at the top of the diagram, right), facing Courtenay Park and Queen Street, which leads into the town centre. The main entrance is through South Devon House, which opened in 1927. This involves a couple of steps up to the platform, but a step-free route leads from the taxi rank on the south side of the building. The car park is beyond this on the site of the former platform 4. At the north end of this platform are a former terminal platform and sidings alongside Tucker's Maltings, which used to serve the Moretonhampstead branch.
There are now just three tracks in use for passenger trains. The platform nearest the entrance (platform 3) is used by most trains running beyond Exeter to London, the north of England and Scotland. A wide footbridge, which is served by both stairs and lifts, leads to the southbound platform. The track on the west side (platform 2) is mainly used by trains to Plymouth and Penzance, while the east side (platform 1) is used mainly by trains to and from Paignton.
Trains from Paignton can use either side of the station. Long-distance services are generally switched to the main line, south of the station, so use the same platform as trains from Plymouth. Local trains to Exeter and tend to run the "wrong way" through the same platform that they use when running to Paignton and then join the main line north of the station. Similarly, trains to Paignton often use the Plymouth platform if another train is blocking its usual platform.
Around the station
thumb|right|alt=A map of the railway lines radiating from Newton Abbot to (clockwise from top left) Moretonhampstead, London, Paignton and Penzance (not to scale).|Railway routes around Newton Abbot in 2009
The industrial area opposite the station was the site of the South Devon Railway workshops; its engine shed was situated a little to the north of the station. Beyond this was the Hackney marshalling yard, where goods trains were, and still are from time to time, reformed for the journey over the hills towards Plymouth.
Hackney Yard
Located at
A new marshalling yard was opened at Hackney, just north of the station, on 17 December 1911. It is a useful staging point for freight trains travelling over the steep inclines of Dartmoor on the way to Plymouth, as these trains either have to be shorter or use additional locomotives compared with the flat route from Exeter. When it was no longer required for this role, it was restored and put on display on the station platform. It has since been moved to the railway museum at Buckfastleigh and is the only original British broad gauge locomotive that survives.
The original engine shed was closed in 1893 and a new eight-road standard GWR pattern shed along the lines of those at Salisbury and Exeter, with a northlight pattern roof, was constructed under the initial code NA. The coaling stage was a non-standard wooden trussed lean-to affair, with the coaling ramp level with the yard, while the approach roads where the locomotives were refuelled some below yard level. This made adding an ash shelter later during World War II especially easy. The single standard over-girder pattern turntable was installed in 1926.
thumb|The locomotive shed in 1966
Designated and designed as the major shed for the region, it was constructed as a heavy maintenance repair shop. The associated locomotive factory had access to heavy lifting equipment and engineering facilities to maintain, repair and overhaul all types of GWR locomotive. Locomotives could be put into the factory roads by means of a traversing table at the east (Exeter and London) end. The last British Rail (BR) steam engine to be overhauled in the workshops was ex-GWR 4500 Class, no. 4566, outshopped on 15 July 1966.
In 1874, the branch was extended to the station, running parallel with the Plymouth line as it had done before 1855. There were now three tracks on this section but, on 22 May 1876, the branch was doubled as far as , which meant a fourth track was added. The tracks were grouped: down branch, up branch, down main and up main.
In 1914, along with the rebuilding of the station, it was proposed to install a flying junction at Aller to speed up the passage of trains coming off the branch.
The XC service is mostly between and but many trains continue to other destinations including in the west and or in Scotland. There is also a limited XC service between and .